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When it comes to photographing presidents, the Secret Service makes showing up very early a necessity. When President Bush recently visited the Naval Academy in Annapolis to deliver a speech on the war in Iraq, the media were instructed to arrive before dawn. The Sun used a photo of midshipmen listening attentively to Bush, but an image I captured of the Mids waiting for him to arrive offered an amusing, offbeat view. While I was waiting, I also saw Jennifer Ziehl, who runs the production company hired to erect the "Plan for Victory" stage set, vacuuming the stage where the president would speak.

I walked into a dark auditorium with my laptop, a photo slide show ready and butterflies in my belly. I thought, "I'll do OK." After all, I had the laughing horse photo, my secret weapon. Kids love the laughing horse. I was asked by Rob Paymer, a former Sun photography intern who now is director of Bridges, a summer continuing-education program at St. Paul's School, to speak to a crowd of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. After the slide show (the laughing horse is now famous at Bridges)

I love fresh peas. And that's what got me out of bed early one Sunday morning. I met a friend at the Baltimore Farmers' Market, and we weaved though the crowd. We both saw people we knew, and one I stopped to talk with was Marvin McDowell, whose wife, Eula, sells many varieties of her bean soup there. Marvin is a boxer turned trainer and founder of the Umar Boxing Program Inc., an inner-city boxing facility. The Maryland Boxing Hall of Famer said he was working with someone who was preparing to fight in a national competition.

I love fresh peas. And that's what got me out of bed early one Sunday morning. I met a friend at the Baltimore Farmers' Market, and we weaved though the crowd. We both saw people we knew, and one I stopped to talk with was Marvin McDowell, whose wife, Eula, sells many varieties of her bean soup there. Marvin is a boxer turned trainer and founder of the Umar Boxing Program Inc., an inner-city boxing facility. The Maryland Boxing Hall of Famer said he was working with someone who was preparing to fight in a national competition.

On Wednesday, Sept. 20, I was assigned to cover a street vigil for a young man who had been shot and killed recently on Cleveland Street. Conducting the vigil would be the Rev. Willie Ray, known in Baltimore for his activism against drugs and violence. However, for Ray, this was a different sort of vigil. This time, he was to eulogize his great-nephew, George Young, 23. As I drove up to the site of the vigil on Cross Street that evening, only Ray and a handful of others were there. I began to wonder if there would be a real vigil to cover or just a man on his mission to save lives.

When baby nurses Meredith Ball and Annie Duguid heard Jennell Dickens had given birth to quintuplets, they reached out to help. They knew what a potentially overwhelming array of tasks confronted Dickens and Noval Davis as new parents, and stepped up to offer their services. The nurses helped to establish a schedule to organize the feeding and care of the five babies. Since then, they have sometimes stayed late into the night so the new parents could sleep. Ball and Duguid have even shared tricks of the trade to help simplify the quints' care.

I walked into a dark auditorium with my laptop, a photo slide show ready and butterflies in my belly. I thought, "I'll do OK." After all, I had the laughing horse photo, my secret weapon. Kids love the laughing horse. I was asked by Rob Paymer, a former Sun photography intern who now is director of Bridges, a summer continuing-education program at St. Paul's School, to speak to a crowd of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. After the slide show (the laughing horse is now famous at Bridges)

On a recent assignment to take aerial photos of wetlands on the Chesapeake Bay, I had the opportunity to fly to Ocean City, about an hour's journey by single-engine Cessna, the shortest time I have ever taken to travel there. Cut away were the usual middlemen of an otherwise three-hour commute: the traffic on the Bay Bridge, the troopers in the median fishing for speeders on U.S. 50, boxy and alien hotels standing guard over the sea, demanding their own greedy toll of course. From the sky, the crashing fury of the ocean surf appeared tame and docile.

About a month ago I became an intern at The Sun. I had hoped to find myself immersed in different situations and interacting with different people every day, something I don't get much of as a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I have been lucky enough to do all this and more. Photographing people is a challenging and rewarding task. I had always had an interest in the human element of whatever I was shooting, and that was reflected in my pictures. From portraits to abandoned houses to the Lexington Market, I always felt the presence of people, either in that specific moment or long gone.

The holidays are coming and, like a song that you can't get out of your head, so are the relatives. Kids are scrubbed up and paraded in front of loved ones, and everyone wants a picture. So, to avoid years of therapy and a drawer full of unidentifiable photos of loved ones, here are a few tips to make taking family portraits a lot easier -- and more enjoyable. Location, location, location Please, not the fireplace. Everyone loves the fireplace / mantle photo. But it usually means dark surroundings and distracting elements in the background.

About a month ago I became an intern at The Sun. I had hoped to find myself immersed in different situations and interacting with different people every day, something I don't get much of as a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I have been lucky enough to do all this and more. Photographing people is a challenging and rewarding task. I had always had an interest in the human element of whatever I was shooting, and that was reflected in my pictures. From portraits to abandoned houses to the Lexington Market, I always felt the presence of people, either in that specific moment or long gone.

If you thought that kids outgrew small bicycles and skateboards, you probably weren't one of thousands at the AST Dew Tour last weekend near Oriole Park. However, if you attended the sold-out event, you saw men in their late teens and up through their 30s doing tricks on "kid" toys that you never dreamed of. The "athletes" performed tricks with names I can't even begin to spell, but trust me, the names don't do them justice. On the "vert" ramps, (wood ramps, curved to form a high-sided "U")

Seated in the lower reserve seats along the right field line at Memorial Stadium, I was convinced it was going to happen. Another late-inning rally to win a game - this time for a World Series championship. In 1979, the season that gave birth to Orioles Magic, the home team was down by a run to the vaunted Pittsburgh Pirates. It was the eighth inning. The Orioles had loaded the bases, and Eddie Murray stepped to the plate. The crack of the bat caused right fielder Dave Parker to take a quick step toward the wall, and he nearly stumbled.

A number of years ago, I couldn't be persuaded to ride "Superman: Ride of Steel," at Six Flags America. I simply hate that feeling I get in my stomach (with a smile on my face) when riding over the crest of the first hill of a roller coaster. When I was given the chance to take a media ride with pilot Charles Lynch and the Yak Attack Demo Team, I was faced with another chance of placing my life in someone else's hands, and photo editor Chuck Weiss wanted me to shoot video and capture photos.

Happy Snaps That's how Bill Eppridge signed my starting-to-get-tattered copy of his new book A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties. It is a tad ironic, the book ending with such a sad note - the death of Robert F. Kennedy at the hands of an assassin and the funeral. Something Eppridge has lived with for 40 years. That is how this business moves; the professional photojournalist often compartmentalizing strong emotion and constantly clinging to a facade of detachment. Look to the future and not continuously dwell on the past.

I caught the eye of the Evans family, with all my camera gear hanging off me in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart, while trying to get a front-page photo to go with a daily business story. They called over to see who I was and what I was doing. Seeing two adorable little boys and in the middle of an assignment that was going nowhere, I was happy to oblige. That's when I met one of Karen Evans' twins, Denzel. He was a take-charge, 4-year-old who wasn't shy about asking me to take photos of his plush toy's rear-end, to which he giggled hysterically with his twin brother, Denim, upon seeing the image on the back of my digital camera.

WHEN I WAS eight, my parents gave me a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, the simplest camera you could buy in 1955. All I had to do was look down through the prism viewfinder, find what I wanted to shoot, push the button and wind the film for the next shot. I was a great button-pusher, but that film-winding thing always gave me trouble. As a result, I could expect some amusing double, triple and even quadruple exposures on every roll. Mom and Dad thought they were a waste of film. I thought they were great art. With today's digital cameras, you don't have to worry about wasting film, because you can delete the shots that don't turn out before they see the light of day. Double exposures, of course, are a relic of the past.

When assigned by The Sun to cover the viewing and funeral last week of Coretta Scott King, the first lady of the civil rights movement, I was stunned. I applied for credentials, but security was tight and credentials were not to be had. I was frozen out of the viewing the day before the funeral, and I knew the funeral itself would be even less inviting. Showing up in the pre-sunrise hours didn't help. Ten thousand people would be allowed to enter the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, but I couldn't schmooze my way in, even to step foot in the lobby.

There is a widely unknown fact about Preakness shared among The Sun staff photographers: Not much changes year to year. Infield bacchanal. Hats and fashion finery. Clean corporate village. Money and betting. Horses, jockeys and owners. The unexpected "Running of the Toilets" arrived as something new - amid a barrage of beer cans. Early in the day the Associated Press moved a great beer-washed photo from the toilets. As though personally insulted, and having missed the opportunity last year while working the infield, I felt it my duty to do better.

A race horse exercises on a wet track at Pimlico Race Course on Tuesday, May 13, as I covered the first two arrivals for the 133rd running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Although the track was rather wet, practice went on as scheduled for the week. The image was taken from the roof of Pimlico, at the press level, taking advantage of the flowers planted near the finish line. In addition to covering the week's Preakness arrivals for video on the Web, I chose to shoot some still images to capture the equestrian ambience for the newspaper, adding to the workload, since the original photographer had to be reassigned that day. A cool breeze swept past my lens while I waited for the moment to capture the shot.